


Rise and Redefine

by Helendmeyourears



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:06:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25966336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helendmeyourears/pseuds/Helendmeyourears
Summary: Andromache finds herself, as she often does, in Italy.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	Rise and Redefine

**Author's Note:**

> Taking advantage of tumblr's andy week to post some thoughts on her and lykon. It's wild to me that she spent almost 2,000 years traveling with him and he's like a minor footnote in the story. Hence, this. Hope I did it some semblance of justice

Andromache finds herself, as she often does, in Italy.

It's not so much that she plans to come to this place, with its old people and older streets, or that she even wants to, as cold as it may sound. What draws her here is deeper than that, as much a part of her as her bones and the exhaustion that settles within them like a house.

How long has Lykon been gone? Andromache never knows how to measure these things, all of which refuse to be neatly defined. The people of the world keep time according to their beliefs; science, religion, it shifts as they do- cycles of the moon, perhaps, or the rotation of a clock’s hand. All of it rolls on and on, and they are compelled to put a name to what it leaves behind.

Lykon breathed his last in the 15th century. That is the long and the short of it.

Andromache, however, knows better.

She drops to a crouch, presses her hand against the cool, dark soil, still damp from the early morning dew. She stands on one hill amongst many, grassy waves upon a verdant sea that stretches faraway into the horizon. It wasn’t always this, though she finds that to be true of most places she revisits, and at an ever-increasing rate. Towns, trees- all rise and fall according to the needs of man.

This place in particular was once a forest. Important enough, so it was, to have warranted a war over the right to keep it. Men had lived for it, fought over it, and died in it. Lykon included.

He was gone, gone like the trees, and still Andromache was not.

She doesn’t sit so much as let herself fall into a sitting position, landing hard on her rear with a pain that disappears almost as soon as it starts. This, too, is denied her.

Her hand forms a fist, pounds into the ground once, twice, three times.

She had known Lykon was gone long before they ever stepped foot into another man’s war. Almost two thousand years, they had traveled together, most of them with only each other for company. There was no way she could not have known. They were more than friends, more than siblings even, they were something else entirely that could not be described with something as limiting as words.

She knows it was relief written across his face, at the end. Fear, yes. Pain, of course. But the relief? That struck her like a blow in of itself. She could not forget, had held it inside her with every other awful thing that had rooted itself down beneath her skin.

Like the jealousy, some bitter part of her whispers. 

Something creeps its way up to the back of her throat, but she refuses to release it to the sun, and lays into the ground with her fist again, more forceful than before. There’s a slight crack, light as a twig snapping underfoot. Her pinky, she thinks, distantly.

It is only in her darkest moments that she allows herself to think of it. How she wishes she had taken Lykon’s place, not entirely out of love, but also because of the weariness that followed her every step, unrelenting as a shadow. Just as it had done to him.

She has tried for so long to escape it. The attempts at doing some good with Joe, Nicky, and Booker, the travel, the people of the world and all they have to offer- none of it helps. None of it even seems to matter. It’s nothing but time making fools of them all.

So why is she here?

Andromache lifts her head to the sky, gives Lykon’s final resting place one last look. There are no answers here, there never are. But that has never stopped her from visiting.

The sun is high now across the gently rolling hills, and for one long, quiet moment, she almost imagines she can feel its warmth. She closes her eyes, instinctively turning her face to it.

There is a buzz from her hip. She does not hesitate to answer it.

“Andy,” she says in greeting, as if anybody with her number wouldn’t know.

“Have some time in that busy schedule of yours to visit a friend in Marrakesh?” Booker’s reply is light, casual. As if it hasn’t been months since they’ve last spoken.

Andy turns it over in her head.

She stands, turning away from Lykon’s valley, and brushes the dirt from the palms of her hands. She doesn’t look back.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, feedback is loved and appreciated, and you can find me on tumblr @astral-kaysani


End file.
